


WIP: Eddie

by soubriquet



Category: Dark Tower
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/soubriquet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddie never even kissed him. WIP. No idea where this is going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	WIP: Eddie

Eddie types, and the world feels sick. He could be high, but in Eddie Dean's world he knows he isn't, because when he is high, it's like he opens up another set of eyes. This time, it's like everything's slowly powering down in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead.  
The world feels like it's turning, like he's on one big carousel ride, and Henry's voice picks up - he's stood watching like the first time he caught Eddie jacking off. Just stood there with that shitass grin never meeting his eyes. 'Ooooh, wassee got therrre?' and Eddie had shoved it back in his pants faster than you could say what does it look like jackass, face flaming, but it was too late, the damage had been done and Henry Dean wasn't ever going to let it go, no, not ever. 'Dos'ee have a wittle carroty bean, dos'ee?'

No. Eddie knows he isn't high. Henry never speaks to him when he's 'in the zone' (you have to be 'in the zone' to know what that means), and besides, he hasn't had a hit in what, months? Years? Time is funny down here, where the spiders spin.

If you keep quiet, you get to keep your hopes safe.

That phrase drifts across his mind, wiping its feet like it means to stay there, and Eddie can't think why.

It's a drug, that's all it is, he thinks. Just another fucking voice in your head. Poking up above the railings like it expects to be shot at. If you keep quiet…

"You get to keep your hopes safe."

The murmur almost startles him. It certainly brings Eddie back to the normal world, with Susannah curled beside him and Jake snoring away in the other room. Susannah stirs, and almost knocks the laptop off his knee, but his - their - reflexes have grown sharp over the months/years. So he catches it, his eyes drawn inexorably to the screen.

A rose, a key, a stone, a door.

Eddie Dean pulls the keyboard towards himself, and writes-  
Sometimes, I feel like strangling myself.

Sits back. There, he's said it.

-

He feels like he's groping for a handhold that just isn't there. Seems like he's been groping in the dark ever since… ever since Roland left.

And even as he sits here with a wife beside, a sort-of kid in the other room, he leans down into the keyboard. Puts his elbows on the metal and covers his face with his hands. Because he's lonely - lost - he doesn't want to say it- been  
alone  
ever since Roland left.

It hasn't been the same - I shoot with my heart - not at all. Not in the slightest. Now he is empty, and not in the kind of funny way where you try to justify tears and put yourself through a grieving process when you know you're already onto acceptance- you've known it was coming for months now. It's not like that. He doesn't feel like a fraud when he still says he loves him.

But who would believe a junkie? No one with any sense.

Roland believed. Roland, who sometimes thought of him as _kamai_ \- ka's fool - believed in him. He's never really had that before.

Yeah, hell yeah, he thought he did. Henry - who only ended up using him, manipulated him his whole life - Susannah, whom he loved, and still does, but of the kind that has conditions, that makes sense in this world.

God, I think I'm gonna explode, Eddie thinks, and runs to the bathroom. Just sits there, face in hands, drawing in haphazard breaths like air through a punctured lung. Lets it out as a shriek: one long shriek that ends up sounding like a slow motion recording of old windscreen wipers squeaking all rubber-like and metal-tasting on the dust screen. He can't seem to stop.

When he finally realises the time, just how long he must have been sitting here, though it only feels like a minute, one minute of hell has passed, he pulls his hair out of the way - all bunched up and wet in his vision. His eyes are red ruins of upset in the bathroom mirror, so destroyed the tear juice has come out of his nose and dangles precariously between the jut of two lips.

I never even kissed him, Eddie thinks, and then he's off again.

-

Eddie has dreams. They're sometimes good and sometimes bad. It's the bad ones that wake him up screaming and holding onto the sheets - what sheets, he's kicked them all off, but the under-sheet is always there, so he holds onto that and tries to will his heart back into his chest. Then it's back to awake/asleep, asleep/awake for the rest of the night, and he spends the day in what Susannah calls his junkie stupor. It's too close to the truth, always far too close. And she knows, but she doesn't know.

The good dreams are never that clear in intention. It seems that, if his mind will let him sleep clear, he'll have to take it metaphorically - I metaphor sex, but she slapped my face and walked away when I asked, remember that one, Roland ol' pal? Not something he can grasp easily. Not like his nightmares.

You're gonna have to work for this one, Eddie boy!

Fuck you, Eddie thinks, and then he has to pause from wiping his face into some sort of order to wonder exactly where along the line he lost it enough to start having the meaningful conversations in his head, or with a man who no longer exists.

He's dead, Jack. _He gave up the ol' shootin' iron and he went down - pow! pow! pow! Thas the last you seen of him! That's all folks!_

I've really got to give it up, Eddie thinks, and a bubble of uncontrolled laughter spills from his throat. _Give it up? Hyuk, hyuk. He already made you give it up, boy!_

Stop talking. Just stop it.

He slaps his palms down on the cold surface of the sink edge, gripping it so tight he can feel his joints start to burn. He thinks he can hear some vestiges of hurt, betrayal, grumbling, but then, mercifully, the voices die down. He looks up into the mirror, briefly, and tries to hold the gaze of the mottled, hollowed-out man standing there gripping onto the sink like it's the only thing he has left to hold onto. The only thing he still has control over whether or not it leaves.

It's a stupid thought.

Eddie lets go, painfully - that's opened up the dry skin on the backs of his hands, but at least he has them free now. He wrings the cold tap, splashes great handfuls of water onto his face - mammalian reflex - it's a good lesson, one he intends to take to the grave.

Then, before he can justify dawdling in this room any longer, he leaves, turning out the light and making his blind way over to the side of the bed he sleeps on. He can get a few hours of this. Three. Maybe even four. Any period of rest is a miracle nowadays; most of the time, he's just glad to be awake. Can't stand all the periods of inactivity when he could be missing something vital - still is.

-

It's too damn cold to breathe right.


End file.
